My UC Davis Orientation

May 2, 2018

The beginning of how I’ll tell you guys why I transferred out of UC Davis and transferred to a CSU where I became truly happy.

Let’s start at the beginning as you know from my previous post, I decided to go to UC Davis because it was a good opportunity and the cost was significantly cheaper. I was working during the summer and thankfully, with that job I was able to afford everything I needed to attend orientation. I bought my round trip train ticket, and paid for my orientation. Thankfully, I didn’t have to stay in a hotel for orientation.

Normally people go with their families, but mine didn’t wanna go because the family car is always in bad shape. So I had to pay for my own train ticket. The train station was an hour away from my hometown, and the day my family was sending me off to the train for orientation, we got a flat tire! Thankfully we realized before driving to the train station, and we stopped at an auto repair shop. It took like an hour or so to get our tires fixed, turns out there was 2 nails in two tires. Thankfully the mechanics took the nails out for free, but by the time we got to the train station my train had just left. I asked for the next train to Davis and I had to inform my friend of the delay. Instead of arriving at Davis by 4 pm, I arrived at 8 pm. It wasn’t all bad, I got to spend more time with my family on that weekend which was nice because I was going off to college soon.

I stayed in Davis with one of my best friends. She moved to Davis right after high school, it was going to be her senior year and my junior year at UC Davis. I stayed at her apartment for one night and I brought a suitcase full of all my cute clothes, they were mostly fall clothes to leave with her so I wouldn’t have to take as much on move-in day. Her and her dad picked me up at the train station. We ate dinner at her house and we caught up! It was so great seeing her, her daughter and her father. I only ever saw my friend once a year during Christmas. After dinner, she helped me pick my classes and put my schedule together which took longer than I thought. We had to get up early the next morning because my orientation started at 8 am and it ended at 5 pm. At orientation I knew throughout the whole experience I didn’t like the school and my gut was telling me to leave and not attend.

I didn’t like the school from that day on because it was large and easy to get lost! Nothing was really useful during orientation, I met a girl who was also an economics major and that was the only day I saw her. I didn’t enjoy orientation like I thought I would. Signing up for classes was of course the last thing to do at orientation. Thankfully I had picked all of my classes the night before and I’ll I had to do the day of my orientation for my classes was get it approved by an advisor and click register. All orientation consisted of was presentation after presentation and a small tour. The presentations just told you about how the school ran and what to expect. It was mind numbing and a complete waste of money in my opinion. I paid $50 for it and then $80 for my train ticket. After the presentations was lunch, more presentations until it was time to talk to advisers to get classes. I actually had to leave orientation early so I could catch my train on time. I ALMOST missed my train home!!! I told the advisers about my train and they checked my classes and told me I was good to go.

After that was the hard part, figuring out how to get to the entry of the school from where I was to meet my friend and her family so they could take me to the train station. It took like 10 minutes or so and I was stressed trying to find the right way back.

The main emotions I felt during orientation were stress, sadness, fear, anxiety, and pressure. There was so much pressure to stay at that university before I had even started because I had already accepted and attended that orientation. I didn’t want to back out. I wanted to follow through and the optimist in me tried to keep an open mind thinking I could end up loving the university. The fear of how I would do at a school with quarter system worried me. I didn’t know how I was going to handle it. I had a lot of anxiety being alone at my orientation and not really clicking with anyone. I was sad because I wanted to like it there, I really did, but I didn’t like it at all.

I was so excited to see the university I was going to attend, and I wanted to love everything. The whole time I was there, I just knew it wasn’t meant for me. The workload advisers spoke about seemed tremendously intense and it was not in my comfort zone. I knew I was going to experience a lot of anxiety when attending there because of the size and structure of the university.